Affective Postcolonialities: Love and Devastation in Dionne Brand’s Multicultural Toronto

Abstract

This article reads Dionne Brand’s novel, What We All Long For, and her book of poetry, Inventory, as chronicles of diasporic life in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. Under new racialized terrains, we encounter difficult negotiations and complex subjecthoods. Her texts call us to the affective registers of loss and trauma and resist postcolonial optimism. Indeed, Brand’s work is attentive to postcolonial tragedy. Following David Scott, this paper offers tragedy as an alternative concept to redemptive resistance and allows us to reflect on subjects suffering in historical crisis.